Metallurg Magnitogorsk @ Avangard Omsk
Great rivalry game and the chance to see Jaromir Jagr in action. This game would be especially interesting for New York Rangers fans as they get to see Jagr vs. a team the Rangers will soon face in the Victoria Cup.

Dinamo Moscow @ Ak Bars KazanAnother great rivalry game.Kazan features what is arguably the best line in the KHL, Morozov – Zinovyev Zaripovas well as last year’s Finnish NHLer, Niko Kapanen.

HK MVD Moscow Region @ Dinamo Riga(Latvia)
The terrible Far East / Siberian 5-game road trip Dinamo Riga had to endure is over and there’s been huge buzz among the completely obsessed with hockey Latvians for the first regular season home game in Riga. Should be very interesting to see what the crowd will be like.

Salavat Yulayev Ufa @ Avangard OmskJaromir Jagr’s powerhouse from Omsk is off to a slow start. Jagr himself has one assist in the first 3 games. This will be his first look at last year’s champions from Ufa and their controversial new signing, Alexander Radulov.

The KHL season has started on September 2nd. The bad news is that I don’t really have the time to cap and post games like I did for a while last season. The good news is that Sportbox.ru is now doing it for me and all I have to do is provide links for those of you who don’t speak Russian.

Here are links to the video of full games from the first 3 days of action that have been posted on Sportsbox.ru so far. Note that you can watch the games in full screen mode by selecting the Silverlight option (you would need to download Miscrosoft’s answer to Flash first) and clicking the full screen icon in the top right corner.

September 4

Vityaz Chekhov @ Atlant Mytischi
The bad boys of Russian hockey, Vityaz, added a major league NHL goon, Chris Simon, to their roster this season. Let’s see if he can contain himself and limit his violence to good ol’ fisticuffs rather than using his skates to inflict pain. Simon joins fellow Canadian goon, Darcy Verot, who is famous across the whole of Russia for trying to punch anything that moves. With the KHL taking a page out of the NHL rule book and allowing fighting (a major change for European hockey) any Vityaz game should not be too boring for the fans of boxing on skates.

September 3

Avangard Omsk @ AK Bars Kazan
KHL debut of a certain player you might have heard about, Jaromir Jagr. Jagr is KHL’s marquee signing and without any doubt the biggest name in the new league. Watch his Avangard take on one of the best clubs in Russian hockey, AK Bars. There’s also a debut of another former NHLer, a Long Island fan favorite Wade Dubielewicz, who is starting in goal for the club from Kazan.

Atlant Mytischi @ Spartak Moscow
Atlant is the new name of the team that used to be known as Khimik Moskovskaya Oblast (Moscow region). Not to be confused with Khimik Voskresensk that was promoted from the Higher League.

Dinamo Riga @ Amur Khabarovsk
Dinamo Riga, a team I used to follow as a kid (so this is personally very exciting for me), has been resurrected to play in the KHL and this is their regular season debut. The team was built from scratch using mostly Latvian national team players, but also includes a few former NHLers in Slovakian Marcel Hossa (younger brother of the NHL superstar Marian) as well as Canadians Duvie Westcott and Mark Hartigan. For their first game Dinamo travels across 8 time zones to the city of Khabarovsk. Quite possibly the longest inter league trip ever for a pro hockey club.

For our last RSL game of the regular season we picked the clash between last year’s champions, Magnitka and this year’s regular season leaders, Salavat Yulayev.

Our next game will be from the first round of RSL playoffs.

You can watch the game in the streaming player or download the file to your computer by clicking the “Open Containing Folder” link below the player, right clicking the file and selecting the “download” option.